Consciousness: My Brain Blogs on Brains

Consciousness:

I thought I might use my second ever blog to talk about consciousness. Everyone has ideas about consciousness; at least most people that I know have some thoughts on thought anyway. That would make sense seeing that a pre-requisite of thinking should be that one can think about thinking. What is thinking though?

Can an animal think about thinking? Is that question even worth asking? Studies may well answer it but they will likely only ever be vague guesses about the nature of animal thought, at least pet dog thought anyway. Enough of that.

I'll lay out my basic idea of consciousness and you tell me what you think!

I should note first that I have not done a lot of study on the subject but have picked out some highly recommended voices on the subject and watched plenty of videos and read some parts of some books - so, not an authority.

Consciousness refers to what we humans think of as that feeling that we are more than our physical bodies. A sense of self. A personality capable of assessing its own attributes and making choices about what aspects to refine and what to drop. It's able to contemplate its surroundings while processing multiple other ideas about space, time, and unobservable futures and past happenings. A memory bank with the ability to constantly make lightning speed, yes and no decisions about what is important to the body that stores it.

Some people say "Awareness". That makes me say "of what?" It's that feeling that you are you and they are them and nothing about that should swap or change. It's imagination - you couldn't ever be them but you can imagine what it might be like. You can place yourself in their situation without having to physically re-enact the circumstance.

Pretty exciting stuff, sounds like an advanced computer, the next i-phone. Maybe not.

So cutting to it, it's all in the brain. And you're like - yeah I knew that! But some people attribute consciousness to something else, or more appropriately "nothing" else. Consciousness is some separate sort of soul type ghost type spirit thing that no-one can see or scientifically prove.Or.. Consciousness is all there is and we are all just imagined physical beings in a giant gooey mess of consciousness.

A little bit simple and un-explanatory though. Again, like religion, explaining something with nothing and ending all questions. Boring really.

So what is it in the brain that makes us ourselves and why does it bother? Two very big questions. But aren't they exciting! Don't they seem like two of the most important questions we can ask?

We know where we came from already (see - evolutionary biology) and the big physics questions are likely a while away (though equally interesting). The brain seems so close, and the applications of the knowledge should be enormous. Imagine a psychology that truly understands the inner biology of the brain. A philosophy that elevates neurons to their rightful place. And the amount of brain diseases that might be better understood and or eradicated - wow, now we're talking!

I think of the neuroscience side of consciousness rather like I think of the role genes play in development. The final characteristics of a human being mostly don't correlate directly with any one gene. There's no real "gene for this" or "gene for that". Genes are naturally occurring phenomena evolved over millions of years and are the ultimate unit of selection in the evolution of life on Earth. The process by which genes evolved was essentially unguided, except by the yes and no of their physical environment and the limitations of their form. Genes (or whatever they once were) didn't have a plan. They blindly reproduced into the future, with the more successful varieties passing their random beneficial variations onto their offspring.

This random block by block approach to building a complex organism such as ourselves (or an earthworm) may seem counterintuitive; you would never employ it if you were planning to complete anything of relative worth in your own creative lifetime. However, over millions of years of duplication, error correction and multiple paths of attack you might just expect to arrive at something functional. But what if you built the foundations that were required to survive in an ancient environment and they have suddenly become unnecessary? They were imperative once and are now a deeply rooted left over waste of space. Unfortunately you're stuck with that junk, or that pathway that caused you initial success. Perhaps your evolved brain can think of better ways of connecting your nerves to your lungs to prevent that annoying old habit of hiccupping that was once so useful when you were a tadpole. If only the genes were a readable blueprint you might have some genetic avenue to travel down and make adjustments. The truth of our evolutionary history is crucial in understanding the haphazard construction of our biological systems(brain included).

So we must understand the brain and consciousness from an evolutionary perspective. Our genes are all working together in millions of different ways to produce an extraordinarily complex end result: us. Our brains likewise are a big messy collection of neurons of which not one is responsible for any one task but all collectively influence one another in ways that have been successful in creating thought patterns that ensure our physical survival.

So, Consciousness is a physical mechanism? Yes.

Basically, the dimensions of our brains and their general functionality can be thought of as genetically predetermined (I guess). Then comes experience. The more we're exposed to anything through our senses, the more branches our neurons make. The more branches - the more surface area for interconnection and more connections between more surface area means more accessible memories and more information to use an process. Wisdom = Connecting Neurons X Time.

Now this description is very short and likely inaccurate in many of its assumptions, but I think it basically covers the way I think about the brain at the moment. The consciousness that we feel is simply an illusion created by the unimaginably complex interlinking of neurons in our brain. BUT I'M ME people will say. I personally don't see what's so hard to let go of. Just because we don't hold a spiritual soul somewhere in our bodies doesn't mean we're any less important or that our actions have any less consequence. Someone once argued with me that “the whole world could just be your dream or mine" Perhaps it could, but so far we have no evidence to suggest it is and besides, all of our physical interactions with the dream have very "real" reactions. Commit a serious dream crime and you may end up spending your life in a dark dream prison being dream beat up or dream raped..How much thought would you give to the idea that it might be a dream while all this is happening?

If there is a soul, that would be interesting. But all we have to go on, is the evidence. Speculation about invisible ectoplasm is pointless. If our consciousness and therefore our moral reasoning is all an illusion - or at least simply the product of physical activity ...that doesn't make suffering any easier. That doesn't make love any less exciting and it doesn't make life any less valuable.

I've covered a lot with a little and I apologise for a lack of references, details and recommended reading, but this is a blog and really I suppose, an opinion piece. I'd like to blog on morality and its origins later.

I'd love to know if anyone has read this and what they thought of it, so please comment. Negative or positive, I would appreciate any feedback.

Cheers

YoungAtheist